The Asia Society announced Tuesday that Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister of Australia, would lead a new research institute it has created that specializes in Asian issues and policy making, a reflection of Asia’s increasing global influence.
Mr. Rudd, 57, a longtime statesman, Asia scholar and fluent Mandarin speaker, will become the first president of the Asia Society Policy Institute in January. His appointment was announced six months after the Asia Society officially formed the institute, which it has described as “a new kind of think tank on the rise of Asia.”
Based in New York and Washington, the institute has sought to become a hub for research and analysis on Asia, which accounts for 60 percent of the world’s population and is projected to account for more than half of global economic output by 2050.
Mr. Rudd, a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, where he has been researching the future of United States-China relations, said in a telephone interview that he was attracted to the new position because the research institute was “not just a think tank but a think-do tank — the do part is how we add value.”
He said the central question confronting Asia was: “How do we ensure that we manage the rise of China in a manner which provides a long-term peaceful and stable relationship with the United States?”
Mr. Rudd, who worked in China as a diplomat and has visited the country more than 100 times, said the “central axis” of other pressing issues in Asia, including the future of the Korean Peninsula and China’s frictions with its Japanese and Southeast Asian neighbors, was “the future dynamics of the U.S.-China relationship.”
Mr. Rudd was Australia’s prime minister from 2007 to 2010, then foreign minister from 2010 to 2012, and prime minister again last year. He has been recognized as one of the founders of the G20 group of nations and as an early advocate of aggressive efforts to combat climate change.
His Labor Party sustained a stinging loss a year ago against a conservative opposition coalition led by Tony Abbott, who replaced Mr. Rudd.